Specks of Red in Black Corners
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [drabble collection, side-story to Two Deaths and a Living Friend] Shou, after losing both Norun and Peck, tucks himself into a dark corner and continues to sink - except for the efforts Tsurugi makes to reach him that give a little light.
1. receiver

**A/N:** _Written for the DFC Festival's roller coaster ride. The task is a twenty drabble collection with prompts – more prompts the longer I take. :D Right now I'm on one per drabble (right at the start of the ride), and the prompt for this drabble is "receiver". _

_Also, this is an AU which will be expanded on through the "Two Deaths and a Living Friend" series. Consider this a sneak peak of the verse. :) Or Shou's side of things anyhow._

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><p><strong>Specks of Red in Black Corners<strong>

**1: receiver **

At some point he'd disconnected his phone. He could swear it still rang: an annoyingly shrill tone under the dark corner of the bed where he'd stuffed it.

Of course, it probably still rang elsewhere in the house. He hadn't the luxury of his own phone and it was, now, a good thing he didn't. His parents would have paid for something he didn't want, nor need.

No, he was lying to himself about that. He _did_ need it. More than he cared to admit. But he refused it. He refused it for himself and for that black hole growing in his heart.

Tsurugi couldn't bring them back. Not Norun. Not Peck. Not that happy soul that had shattered at their deaths.


	2. wishing well

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**2: wishing well **

He still got sympathy cards. Now, he tossed them in to the bin without looking at their sender.

Sympathy was such a superficial thing anyway. Condolences. Stupid flowers that would wilt before they even touched his hands or their graves. Little sticks of incense that would burn out and leave only the smell of ash behind.

They weren't going to comfort him. They weren't going to bring him back. And it wasn't like those who brought their petty sympathies cared like he did anyway. It wasn't like they understood.

So he didn't bother with them any more. He'd tried, at the beginning, wondering if there really had been something there. But he'd found nothing, so everything went in the bin now.


	3. blood

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**3: blood **

There hadn't been a whole lot of blood.

Maybe that was a childish idea. Thinking death had to equal blood and rejecting it when it did not. But what good was that? Rejecting it didn't make it any less the truth. Embracing it on the other hand cut out that whole flimsy waiting game in between.

He didn't waste any days by the window, waiting for Peck to fly in with ruffled feathers and a worm still squirming on his beak. He didn't go out to the park, where Norun had awaited him. Because Norun wasn't there any more. Neither was Peck. One crushed by stones. The other crushed by nature.


	4. purring

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**4: purring **

Tsurugi was relentless. He was more than happy to accept a sparring match if it meant getting a response.

But, after a while, even those heartstrings touched by his words or his pranks failed to reach him. That purring, that barking, that crowing – he'd at first imagined Peck chased by other animals, but it wasn't the same. It failed to rouse him as he lost those simple memories, as only the vague, meaningful, ones remained.

And he couldn't bring himself to care that Tsurugi was trying to drag him out of there, or indeed that anyone was – his parents, other people he barely knew…

They could keep on bothering the door. It didn't bother him any more.


	5. shelf

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**5: shelf **

If anyone had ever told him before he could spend so much time in his room and not get bored, he'd think they were joking. But that was before he locked the door to the outside world.

It was his choice, not to go there anymore…except when he had to, and that was becoming less and less as he became used to his new shut-in life. Sanitary needs and food were the only things. He didn't need anything else the outside had to offer. He had his memories…and he had an artificial world the internet provided. A place where the laws of the real world did not hold.

A world where he could dream in forevermore and have no more nightmares like this one which had caught him so fiercely in its grasp.


	6. daylight

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**6: daylight **

The curtains were always drawn now. It had been a while since he'd seen the full light of the sun and he didn't want to see it. He kept those curtains drawn himself. To shut out that sun. That happy sun that still thought there was something to smile about.

There wasn't. And he had no desire to torture himself with that smiling face so he didn't. He shut it out. Just like he kept the door shut to other smiling faces. His parents' smiles. Other well-wishers. Tsurugi.

Why oh why had he ever become friends with a guy like that? If he'd known…

But that begged the question. If he'd known, would he have become friends with Norun? With Peck? If he'd known he would lose them?


	7. colour

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**7: colour **

In the dark it was harder to make out colours. Not that he needed colours. Peck was a black bird. Norun liked black and grey and white as well. White was the only one he couldn't make out in the dark.

But it was a small price to pay to blot out everything else. Because colours meant the brown of mud. It meant the red of blood – though there hadn't been too much blood. It meant the green of leaves that were just starting to turn yellow – it meant those yellow tinges on the leaves.

He didn't need to see any of those. Peck smiled in the shadows. Norun smiled in the shadows.

He, Shou, smiled in the shadows as well.


	8. ambrosia

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**8: ambrosia **

His most visited pages – they were getting more and more hits by the day as he cycled through them. Those greek myths that Norun had loved so much. Pictures of birds he'd licked showing Peck for some weird reason. Teasing, maybe. Teasing that Peck would one day find a female crow and have little baby crows –

It wasn't going to happen. It was never going to happen. Not now.

Not now that poor Peck had been stoned and fallen off a branch and broken its neck. Whether it was by the rock or the fall was anyone's guess. It didn't change the outcome though. His neck was snapped. He was dead.

And Norun was dead too. She'd laughed at those legends, at their magnificent powers and drinks of poison and immortality. She'd wistfully wondered what it would be like to live forever, live _happily_ forever. And she'd joke about how Peck should have been a dove, bringing that heavenly drink for the both of them.

That wasn't to happen either.


	9. ghoulish

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**9: ghoulish **

His mother managed to catch him to the bathroom.

He wished he had a bathroom attached to his bedroom. That way he wouldn't have had to run the risk. But he didn't. That was one of the reasons he did have to leave the room.

At least his parents respected his wishes enough to leave food for him in the microwave. Not outside the door. That was too easy. Too easy for him to avoid them.

They made it more difficult. And, sometimes, they caught him.

She caught his arm. 'You look like a ghost,' she said.

Harsh, but properly accurate. Not that he cared. He pulled himself away, locked himself away again. Did his business. Emerged. Went back to his room again.

His mother either didn't have the heart or the strength to stop him.


	10. L

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**10: L **

There were three English letters on the screen. N. E. O. Sometimes, Norun had wondered if the N was an L – since this was a Japanese computer and there was no equivalent to the letter L in the Japanese alphabet.

But it was an overseas site from the looks of things and his computer had no trouble displaying English letters – and there were Ls scattered elsewhere on the page. Just not on the title screen. It was just those three. N. E. O. NEO.

Norun had been in two minds about that site, but she'd still been interested in it. Interested enough to visit it every time she was at Shou's house, in his bedroom, on his computer.

Even without her, he visited that page every day.

Some days, he never made it past the title page.


	11. broad, fish, flash

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**11: broad, fish, flash**

The curtain was drawn on the constellations now, and the only source of light at night was the computer screen.

And, when he bundled himself into his covers, it was the little red light flashing, complaining.

He left the power on. A small red blink in the otherwise black night.

It was…comforting, somehow. Like the stars and the moon had before, when Norun would watch from her own window and Peck would watch from his. The ram. The fish. The lion.

And, sometimes, they'd climb the hill together and watch the sky in its entirety, with no window to narrow its frame, or tree or building to obscure it.

But not anymore. Now the curtains hid them better than trees or buildings ever could.


	12. toast, girl, calico

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**12: toast, girl, calico**

His mother had given up on nice warm toast and resorted to cereal. At least that didn't get all soggy and rubbery before he finally caved in.

And he was later caving in every time. Practice did that.

Still, his mother was his mother – and maybe all girls were the same because even Norun had hounded him about eating properly…and Tsurugi about eating too much. Though Tsurugi had Kitajima to do that now.

And Shou didn't have Norun anymore.

Just his mother, caring but being a pain. Because he didn't mind shrivelling up, but when his stomach growled and he knew there was food outside the door he couldn't keep up the façade.

Even if it tasted bland and textureless in his mouth.


	13. swirl, quadratic, chemistry

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**13: swirl, quadratic, chemistry**

The computer was a world in itself. There was little need to bother with the world around it when it was there: powered, and connected to the internet like it was.

And even in that world, there were many other worlds. Sometimes he and Norun would play a game. Pick a word and type it into the search engine, and then find a word from the results and keep on going.

They never had to repeat a word, even when they forgot what the original words were in the swirl.

And it helped in lots of other things too. Homework: math and science that was beyond her but still interesting to the both of them. Lots of homework help sites and forums. And stories that she'd loved to read.

But now there was only N.E.O.

Because N.E.O promised something homework help sites could never give.


	14. composition, open door, gravity

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**14: composition, open door, gravity**

N.E.O was, at its roots, a role-playing site.

But it was more than that.

If someone wanted a world to themselves, they could have it.

If they wanted to give voices and faces to friends and family that were no longer there, they could do it.

Sometimes it hurt, despite the longing. A sad poem that hummed behind the letters on the title screen.

Those days, he would leave the door closed.

Other days, the longing was too strong and he'd fly, unbound by reality, amongst them.

It was amazing. Frightening. Addicting. Gripping.

But Shou didn't care, because it was the only way he could see Norun and Peck now.


	15. alabaster, corridor, trajectory

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**15: alabaster, corridor, trajectory**

Tsurugi was kicking a ball outside his door.

It made it difficult to hear, so Shou put his monitor into sleep mode and crawled in to bed.

Why he couldn't kick _outside_ might've been beyond him once upon a time, but he just didn't care anymore. No doubt his parents encouraged the blatant disrespect for social standards too. Anything to get him out of his room for more than the bare necessities.

As if he'd want to go out just to risk being hit by a hard-kicked ball. He'd been on the receiving end of those before, playing goalie for Tsurugi's hits.

And he'd scowled quite frequently about it when Peck was close by.

Maybe he'd jinxed Peck in the process.

Except it hadn't been a ball, but a rock. And it hadn't been Tsurugi but boys he didn't even know.


	16. alchemy, misplaced, anxiety

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**16: alchemy, misplaced, anxiety**

It was just too bad fantasy wasn't a reality.

He still had some of Norun's books in his room. Half of them were English and it would take him days of concentration to struggle through. The other half were Japanese and would take _her_ just that long – or would have, if she were there to read them.

Though sometimes he just listened to her voice coming from N.E.O, reciting those exact words in the echo of the past he could allow himself to get lost in. And it was easy to pretend to forget, pretend to imagine it coming from the present, from beside him: on his carpet, in his bed…

And it was easy to listen to her voice telling spells and potions and magic that could turn lead to gold and raise the dead. All the glorious impossibilities.

And it was easy to pretend those weren't tears sliding down his face like the betrayers they were.


	17. robust, pop, irrefutable

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**17: robust, pop, irrefutable**

His room still put up with him, but that was because it wasn't sentient, and therefore didn't have a choice.

He kept it relatively clean, only because he spent most waking moments in there and a dirty environment was…uncomfortable. He hadn't sunk quite that far yet. He hadn't gotten quite that blind, or that deaf.

And as for himself, he still drowned himself under the shower spray and its warm water until his ears and heart were filled to the brim and blocked.

Because he and his room were bundled up so tightly it rarely ever got cold enough to go truly numb.

And while nothing could argue with numbness, grabbing it for so long was difficult too.

The darkness was much easier and kinder than the eternal cold.


	18. invocate, radius, asinine

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**18: invocate, radius, asinine**

N.E.O had been a publicity stunt, initially. A little add that kept on popping up on homework sites and where reviews of books and things like that were – the things he and Norun would often look at together.

But it had swept him up quickly enough.

Not Norun though. Norun, for all her love of fantasy, had been a little unnerved at the realism of that virtual world. At how it made the impossible possible behind the screen: how it gave that illusion. Still, she'd visit it with him. Form her avatar – the avatar that was now his only image of her barring the pictures that slowly faded in the darkness. Help him in making Peck as well…

Even though he knew, though he wouldn't admit it to himself, that she would be disappointed in how this Peck looked more like the original than all the other still alive crows in the world.

It was one thing Norun wouldn't have understood.

Peck would have, though.


	19. unlikely, scope, absent

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**19: unlikely, scope, absent**

They didn't have arguments anymore.

They rarely had. Norun had been perfect on most aspects, and there were few things they'd disagreed about. But there had been some. N.E.O was one. His "closet-attitude" as she called it was another.

It was hardly his fault his heart was only big enough for so many.

And could only take so many losses.

Hearts weren't made for more than that.

And holes took up a lot of room.

Norun would have argued that. And maybe her heart was infinitely large. Tsurugi would argue that as well – though Shou was less inclined to believe him. Tsurugi didn't know the meaning of seriousness. No one like that could give a great deal of their heart to another person.

The Norun that lived in N.E.O didn't argue his sentiment.

She couldn't.

And that was fine, because rare arguments weren't a way to remember someone.


	20. pomp, partner, crossroads

**Specks of Red in Black Corners**

**20: pomp, partner, crossroads**

Peck hadn't been loud and brash and vain. Peck had liked the darkness as much as Shou. Peck had been loyal.

Before Norun, before Tsurugi, Peck had been his only friend.

And Peck had been the first to go. Then Norun.

Often, he wondered if he'd even _had_ Tsurugi in the first place.

He still came. Knocked on the door until Shou couldn't hear anything else but that echo. Talked until Shou couldn't hear anything but his voice. Meaning well, maybe. But he was just an annoyance.

Shou didn't want him.

But Tsurugi still came. Waiting, never going beyond the door.

As if he was waiting for Shou to open it and meet him.

But Shou wouldn't.


End file.
